


The Hollows of their Footprints

by HardingHightown



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27610541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/pseuds/HardingHightown
Summary: From a tumblr prompt: "They willed me bravery. I was not brave."Cullen looks back on his last days in Kirkwall as Hawke comes to Skyhold.
Kudos: 5





	The Hollows of their Footprints

He knew he should have rejected the titles they bestowed on him. He knew there were things people called him that suggested success, suggested a hero. He knew he did not earn them, had not yet earned them. But there was humility and then there was self loathing, and the latter was as sinful as the former if it stopped one from doing one’s duty.

The past years had been eventful, even by his own standards. Kirkwall was always a place of tensions, but surely nobody could have foreseen how they erupted, the aftermath, the place they found themselves now. Hawke visited him once before she fled the city, unexpectedly. He had expected her to run while he had called off his men, to take the chance to flee as quickly as possible. Instead, two days after the red lyrium had pulled Meredith apart, she turned up at his quarters and entered without so much as a word, pouring him a drink in silence and watching him, seemingly awaiting his move to break the silence on it. They were not close, so he knew it was no social call. It was a mark of power as much as anything else, a demonstration that she no longer feared what the order might do, if she ever did. That she would leave when she was ready to. She knew he had seen her use the most powerful of her magics in the fight against Meredith, she knew now that there could be no doubt between them, no pretence or eye turned away to allow for things. The pot had boiled over. There was no going back from that moment. There was no going back.

Even the drink she brought with her seemed to be a message. She had sought out a bottle of a rich ale brewed from hops crushed by the windmill in Lothering. It was a dark, sweet drink with a lingering aftertaste, one that he remembered drinking from the cellars of the circle. Not one for everyday quenching of thirst, a celebration drink reserved for name days and, for him, celebrating the successful harrowing of their wards. The taste of it took him back. It felt impossible that she had not done such a thing on purpose.

She wanted him to apologise, he knew that now. In truth, he probably knew that in the moment too, but pride… well. Pride is a sinful thing. A funny thing.

They had taken that drink in silence together, and over the course of the first five sips he had convinced himself that it must have been a coincidence, that a woman raised in Lothering probably drank it for her own name day, her own celebrations. When she poured the second glass from the bottle, she told him that she was taking his offer of fleeing the city, but would not be going alone. That it wasn’t safe anymore for her kind. That she needed him to give both her and any remaining mages freedom to leave the city without interference, that the captain of the guards had already agreed to the terms and that he and his men would to. It was not a question. It was a threat. Allow me to take these people or there will be further blood on the streets. He knew the close nature between such a woman and the captain of the guard was likely to lead to corruption, and the anger then boiled his blood.

He had reminded her of how many of the circle mages had become abominations in their battles. He reminded her that he had seen how many of the senior mages were capable of holding a demon back for a surprising amount of time ,but that no matter how they worked eventually it would overpower them. It always did. He reminded her that it was a curtesy that he had extended her, to let her leave the city without repercussions. She had not liked that last part at all. Any traction he had gained was laid to the ground with that threat. He should have known that there would be no cornering somebody like Hawke.

The deal was left on the table. A week to gather those who needed refuge, and then he could resume whatever acts of rebuilding he needed to. If he allowed this, the Prince of Starkhaven would offer aid, and the guardsmen would work as equals with them to rebuilt the city. It was, he had realised after the blood had stopped pumping in his brain to the point of distraction, his rage at her audacity simmering to a boiling point, the rational choice for the city. Kirkwall had always been a stinking city of corruption. With any luck, if she left with her entourage the others that dealt in her shadow might do the same. Maybe they could build something better in her absence.

He had taken his answer to Captain Vallen, as instructed, in the morning after the visit. He admired much about the Guard Captain, a strong rational woman not prone to flights of fancy, a keen fighter but even keener stateswoman. Hawke knows what she’s doing, she had told him, writing something in a letter and giving it to a raven. It might not always seem the best path to us, but she has weathered worse than either of us can imagine.

It had seemed so presumptuous to him that this woman who did not know him could dare to make a decision that he had not seen things. That a woman from Ferelden could not have heard of the dealings at the circle and deduced that a fellow countryman might have seen first hand the atrocities. That only mages suffered because of the actions of their kin. That they were the victims always, and the templars their cruel masters. This was the world he saw unfolding in the world after Meredith, a sickness spreading through the city of disorder, of sympathies misplaced. They were all victims of Meredith, her men were not excluded from that.

Meredith had been so understanding when he had first come from Ferelden. Upon their first meeting, she had called him away from his ranks and into a private meeting. Away from the others, she had taken off her gloves to shake his hand properly. She had told him that Gregoir had written in detail of the horrors that occured. She said that she understood them, that she had seen what mages were capable of. That it was their duty in the eyes of Andraste to help them when they could not help themselves, to create order where their magic created chaos. She said he did not have to be afraid anymore. No fear, she had said with a kindness in her eyes he had not seen since he left his home. Replace that fear with vigilence. We can help them, with Andraste’s grace. Meredith had ben so welcoming when he had first crossed the sea, and he knew he had missed so many signs because of what she had meant to him. Her words made him feel safe for the first time in years.

Something had corrupted her, he knew that now. Something had snuck in her mind through the lyrium sword she wielded, tainted her through its magic. Something had seen a weakness they had missed in her, a gap in her carefully constructed armour. He would have to be more vigilant, hold the line the Meredith he knew ten years ago would have wanted to hold. The line that was their duty as the last of the templars. He would have to pull what remained back together in the chaos that Hawke had left behind.

The idea made him feel sick.

He would do it, of course. He would get up each day and pull together what he had left. Captain Vallen had suggested they involved the dwarf too, his knowledge of the more criminal elements of the city unparalleled, and so they made an unlikely alliance; the civic, the criminal, and the chantry as it were.

Sadly, not all of his men were happy to be rallied. Some, too stricken by when they had seen that day, fled under a banner of deserters, stowed away on a ship likely brokered by Samson. He wondered if Hawke had any part of that; he had always known she had a greater sympathy with Samson than with him despite their many years of working together. It ate at him under his skin, a faint pressing, gnawing feeling. What had Samson ever done that welcomed such a response? He was weaker, more crude, and evidently not up to the task that the templars were charged with. He had fled, taking good men on a crusade for what? For a freedom from the very thing that made them who they were? From the very duty that should have been the greatest pride of their lives?

Through every decision in Kirkwall, every insurrection quashed, every seemingly impossible decision, he kept remembering Hawke’s face on that last night. The look in her eyes that told him exactly what she had thought of him. That look that she had disguised over the ten years they had known each other, that she had managed to temper despite the flame of rebellion he knew she carried and now just wore bare; a look that told him that she thought he was beneath her.

It reminded him of a pride demon.

When Hawke came to Skyhold, he did not seek her out. He told himself first that it was because she had other concerns, other people to talk to. That Cassandra would get the information she needed, and that Varric would see to the rest. And yet when he was finally faced with her, cornered in the edges of the ramparts, he realised the truth of it. Hawke reminded him. Hawke was a ghost of a past he wanted to forget.

She offered him a drink again, not from a bottle this time but instead from the skin on her person, a light leather pouch that swung over her heart. A swig of it revealed little of what it was to him. All he could taste was the heat of some kind of spirit, one that was surely made for keeping one warm in the coldest climbs, no doubt a concoction she had discovered on her travels.

I am surprised to see you here, she had said after a silent moment looking out over the mountains. I thought they would have asked Aveline.

He remembered that exact conversation, in fact. Varric telling them both that he was going to be questioned by the seekers, and if he wanted to return to the city and continue their work he would need somebody to come with him, somebody to see what was going on. Aveline had ties, a husband and the possibility of children on the horizon. He had nothing. Ten years of service to the city and nothing to show for it, no friends to speak of, no ties left of any real meaning. Nothing to lose, and only the possibility of finding what had become of his men to gain. The seekers would likely be involved in the Chantry’s attempts at brokering peace between the mages and the templars, and they were likely to be hunting Hawke through Varric. It all made sense, just the way they had planned it to. It was an opportunity that fit him well, and he had not doubted that until Hawke brought that doubt to him.

I was the right choice, he had told her. He believed it truly until he said it out loud, and saw the cruelty in her eyes once more.

I’m sure you believe that, Cullen.

 _I’m sure you believe that, Cullen_.

He felt a shiver set over his bones. He’d be sweating soon, then the sickness would come. It was getting more frequent now that the last of the lyrium was leaving his body. This was not the first time he had tried to quit. The first was the day that Meredith fell, the disgust he felt at the sight of her body haunting him every time he tried to sleep, the way she was reduced to ash, her mouth crying up to the skies, her eyes burned away last, so full of fury and hate. He had lasted six days before the demands of the men and women around him had lead him back. This time though, this time it would be different. It would have to be different. Seeing Samson on the horizon, seeing the red spread through men and women he had served with proudly, seeing the power it gave them. The temptation was written all over their flesh. He had to be able to live without that temptation, and even a little of the reliance on it opened up his dreams to nightmares.

Yet she doubted him. And yet again, that ate at him. He did not know what it was about her approval that mattered, but it had consumed him for ten years and seemed like it would for ten years more. Perhaps it was because of what she represented. Hawke, for all her old connections to old families, for all her blue blood and connections and wealth and status, Hawke was a symbol of the new world order. Hawke was hope for people like her and beyond. People spoke of the Champion in a different way than they spoke of any other great hero. She was so much to so many, of the people, of the mages, of the underclasses and low town, of the society balls of the marches, of Ferelden grit and Kirkwall resilience, beloved of the elves seeking their freedoms and the mages wanting their voice. Maybe he still felt like he needed her permission to be a part of this new world. Maybe he wasn’t brave enough to stake out a place in it of his own accord.

I know I might not have been what you needed me to be, Hawke, he found himself saying, his head swimming with the light-headed freedom he often felt in the moments before the storm. I know I might not be the person you favour. I know I was perhaps not brave in the way you needed me to be brave. I believe now I can do good here. I can… I can do better here.

She looked out over the ramparts, before throwing out the last of her skin of liquor over the walls and into the air. I hope you know yourself as well as you think, she replied, turning heel and not looking back.

He hoped so too, more than ever.


End file.
